Top 100 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes
#1. No, amusing me only, I wonder if they realize how they are used?"
"Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation."
"Poor lambs."
"That's not how I'd describe them."
"I was thinking of animal sacrifice."
"Ah. That's closer.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#2. Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#3. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#4. Miles swallowed icy spit. Those who do not know their history, his thought careened, are doomed to keep stepping in it. Alas, so were those who did, it seemed.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#6. I had to discover and teach myself all kinds of tricks to get people to respond to the inside of me, and not the outside.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#7. She opened her mouth once to speak, closed it, then finally ripped out, "Why aren't you on your way home? I gave you an order, Lieutenant!" Stuben, anticipating a warmer reception, was momentarily nonplussed. "We took a vote," he said simply, as though it explained everything. Cordelia
Lois McMaster Bujold
#8. Sorry, Bill. I just have this awful vision of being p-peeled like an onion, looking for the seeds."
He grinned. "Onions don't have seeds, Cordelia."
"I stand corrected," she said dryly.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#10. I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can't be given.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#12. He didn't think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#13. The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#14. There it is! Do it or I'll have (my mother) do it for you! How's that for a threat?"
"Effective.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#15. At some stage of development an officer had to stop following orders and start generating them.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#16. Damn it," he mumbled apologetically, "things like this never happened to Vorthalia the Bold."
She raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "How do you know? The histories of those times were all written by minstrels and poets. You try and think of a word that rhymes with 'bleeding ulcer
Lois McMaster Bujold
#17. Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#19. One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#20. Not that people did much sailing on Ylla's extensive oceans, nor swimming either - Yllan seawater tended to give humans strange rashes, and while humans were highly toxic morsels in the diet of the native sea monsters, the monsters were extremely stupid and kept not figuring this out.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#21. And the Bastard grant us ... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#22. It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#24. To a man of certain age ... all young ladies start to look delightful. It's the first symptom of senility.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#25. One step at a time," Vorkosigan returned grimly, "I can walk around the world. Watch me.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#26. So, how long has my mother had this questionable fetish for bisexual Barrayaran admirals? I don't think even the Betans have earrings for that one.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#27. Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#28. I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#29. Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#30. Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#31. Ethan thought he understood how a propaganda-stuffed young soldier must feel the first time in combat, stumbling by some sudden chance over his enemy's human face. He had gloried for a red moment in his power to break her. Now he stood foolishly with the pieces in his hands. Not at all heroic.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#32. This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.
Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#33. Although upon reflection, Jole wasn't sure of the advisability of introducing a keen young officer to Vorkosigan notions of initiative. Metaphors about fighting fire with gasoline rose to his mind.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#36. My Lord, we wish to resign. Her smile, confusingly, crept wider, as if she just said something delightful.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#39. He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#41. But why, in God the Father's name, should they want to destroy Athos? Is Cetaganda - controlled by women or something?" A
Lois McMaster Bujold
#42. Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they'd hardly do it here. They'd slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn't go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and untraceably in your tracks
Lois McMaster Bujold
#43. She turned for her kitchen, mentally revising her planned family dinner to include a Vor lord from the Imperial capital. White wine? Her limited experience of the breed suggested that if you could get them sufficiently sloshed, it wouldn't matter what you fed them.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#45. For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair.
The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#47. Miles paused at the door. "Ah - about Tav Calhoun - " "Yes?" "You know that janitor's closet on the second level?" "Vaguely." She looked at him in unease. "Please be sure somebody checks it tomorrow morning. But don't go up there before then." "I wouldn't dream of it," she assured him faintly.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#48. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#50. Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#52. In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#53. Admiral Naismith," said Quinn stiffly, "is not a dwarf. He's nearly five feet tall. And I am not 'in love' with him, you low-minded twit; I merely admire his brilliance. Professionally.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#54. It's a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . 'By this act, I bring one death into the world.' One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. . . . Our children change us . . . whether they live or not.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#55. ... the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#56. It must be quite a shock to suddenly find out you're pregnant, seventeen times over - at your age, too.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#57. Are you sure this isn't instant boots? asked Cordelia sadly, for in color, taste, and smell they closely resembled pulverized shoe leather pressed into wafers.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#58. he'd looked as tall and cool as ever, but a faint panicked light in his blue eyes had put her oddly in mind of a cat that had just had an inadvertent ride in a dryer.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#59. Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#60. One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#61. Think if you lent me a razor now, for me to cut my throat with, it would save ever so many steps. Please Your Grace." The Provincara snorted. "Good, Cazaril, good. I do so like a man who doesn't underestimate his situation.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#62. Des said reluctantly at last, Pray to your god. He's the only other one in here besides us. Pen
Lois McMaster Bujold
#63. If you think safety is expensive, try pricing an accident, as the sign says.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#64. Tej seemed such a sunny personality, much of the time
these flashes of dark were like a crack in the sky, shocking and wrong. Reminding him that the daylight was the illusion, the scattering of light by the atmosphere, and the endless night was the permanent default behind it all.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#65. Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#66. There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you. I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you.
- Miles Vorkosigan
Lois McMaster Bujold
#67. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#69. If he ever does do himself in, I'm betting it'll be something that involves large explosions. And lots of innocent bystanders, probably.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#70. War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#71. To use the machineries of justice to commit injustice is the deepest offense to the Father of Winter." He
Lois McMaster Bujold
#72. You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#74. I'm not in a hurry, the woman said. Patience for her vengeance dripped like vitriol from her voice; even Tich was quelled.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#75. When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#77. The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#78. Between one breath and the next, the vision took him. It came not as a chain of reason, more words words words, but as a blinding image, all complete in its first moment, inherent, holistic, gestalt, inspired. Every hour of his life from now on would be but the linear exploration of its fullness.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#79. It's not that I'm not upset; it's just that I'm too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#80. I was just a little taken aback. That - that wasn't the proposition I was expecting, is all. Excuse me. I fear I am become incurably low-minded." "You can't help that, I'm sure," Ethan said tolerantly. "Being female, and all that." She
Lois McMaster Bujold
#81. I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#82. It's so obviously bogus, no one will look for a second layer of, er, bogusity.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#83. Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#84. She considered the familiar conundrum inherent in complimenting a child for doing something well in the course of what ought not to have been done at all, and kept her peace.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#85. How like a man, to change from mask to mask like a player, concealing all intention, yet leave his heart out on the table, carelessly, unregarded, for all to behold.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#87. When he invited me to come for the Winterfair season I wasn't sure if it was hunting or social. and whether I should pack weapons or dresses."
Lady Vorpatril's smile sharpened. "Dresses are weapons, my dear, in sufficiently skilled hands.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#88. Learn everything that existed in the universe, and whatever was left, that
dwarfish-man-shaped hole in the center, would be him by process of elimination.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#89. If only you were willing to betray a trust, why, the most amazing range of possible actions opened up to you.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#90. Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there ...
Lois McMaster Bujold
#93. Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#94. Signs of the Bastard's holy presence tend to be unmistakable, to those who know Him. The screaming, the altercations, the people running in circles - all that was lacking was something bursting into flame, and I was not entirely sure for a moment you weren't going to provide that as well.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#95. We did it," he muttered to Ekaterin, now perching on the chair arm. "Why didn't anybody stop us? Why aren't there more regulations about this sort of thing? What fool in their right mind would put me in charge of a baby? Two babies?
Lois McMaster Bujold
#96. Well, you go straight back to bed, then!" "Yes." He wheeled. She swatted him on the butt. He bit his tongue. She said, "At least you've been eating better. Take care of yourself, huh?" He
Lois McMaster Bujold
#97. The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#98. In fifteen years, all those disturbing biological blobs would be out on Kareenburg's streets, wearing strange fashions, listening to annoying music, and disagreeing politically with their beleaguered parents.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#99. We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#100. All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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